Dogs that are overly protective of people, objects, or space can be dangerous. These dogs believe it is their responsibility to protect the person, object or space they have claimed and will fight tooth and nail to do so. It is our responsibility to establish appropriate boundaries for them to ensure the safety of our dogs and the people and pets around them.

The first step is to perform an honest assessment of your dog's lifestyle. How structured is your dog's lifestyle? How clear are the boundaries in your dog's life? In contrast, how much freedom does your dog have? How often is your dog allowed to make his or her own decisions? The answers to these questions should help us understand why your dog has determined it is his or her sole responsibility to protect this person, object or space.

Your next step is to re-establish your leadership role in your dog's life. You want your dog to understand it is not his or her responsibility to resource guard. Your dog should understand you have everything under control. Start by increasing the structure in your dog's life. Develop and follow a daily schedule. Limit the amount of freedom your dog has to make bad decisions and develop bad habits.

Finally, you will re-establish boundaries in your dog's life. This means setting clear expectations for your dog's behaviors and holding your dog accountable to them. Establishing boundaries requires rewarding behavior you want and correcting behavior you do not want. The specifics to establish boundaries around each form of resource guarding will vary, but the goal is to teach your dog to release control of this resource he or she has claimed.

Please understand resource guarding can be a very dangerous behavior to address! If you have any concerns or hesitations about working your dog through resource guarding issues please contact myself or another local balanced dog trainer who can assist.